Will Banner Meet Hulk In Thor: Ragnarok?

Ever since it was announced that the Hulk would be guest-starring in the Marvel Phase 3 movie Thor: Ragnaok, fans have been speculating how the jolly jade giant might be incorporated into a plot that, you’d assume from the film’s title, will set a lot of the action within the realms of Norse mythology.

Hulk/Bruce Banner actor Mark Ruffalo hasn’t shed any light on that yet, but in an interview with The Huffington Post, he possibly let slip one thing that the film might have in store for the big green guy and his alter-ego: a meeting between them.

“I am excited to keep coming back to this role,” he says. “I see a lot of space for it to grow. I feel like there’s a lot of cool stuff to explore still, especially the relationship between Banner and Hulk. Hopefully, we’ll see the two of them in a scene together. That would be cool!”

Intriguing. Of course, superhero characters meeting their alter egos – and indeed fighting them on occasion – is nothing new in comics or comic books films. The Superman Vs Clark Kent battle is probably the highlight of Superman III (interestingly with Superman portrayed as “bad” and Kent portrayed as “good”) while in 2012 Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk comic had a four-issue “Hulk Vs Banner” storyline. Banner’s relationship with the Hulk has always been a theme of the character(s) so it would be great to explore it on screen with an actor of Ruffalo’s skill.

On the other hand, Ruffalo may have just been speculating. Or, indeed, trying to put the idea out there, hinting to the writers that he’s really like to play that. We’d certainly like to see it.

Thor: Ragnarok, which will shoot in Australia, is set for a UK release on 27 October 2017.